‘One of the most erotic pieces ever written,’ is how mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená describes Ravel’s 1903 song cycle Shéhérazade in the programme for the London Symphony Orchestra’s Prom of the composer’s work, conducted by her husband Simon Rattle. The concert explored Ravel’s lifelong fascination with the fantastic in fairytales and literature, and his evocation of the wondrous in music of great beauty and complexity. He had a remarkable ability to identify with the imaginations of children as well as adults: Rattle flanked Shéhérazade with his 1911 ballet Mother Goose, drawn from a series of piano duets for children, and his magical 1925 opera L’Enfant et les Sortilèges.
Rattle has always been a fine Ravel interpreter, fastidious both in his approach to the music’s detail and in his understanding of its cumulative impact. The LSO played all three works exquisitely, with all the shifts in colour immaculately teased out. Mother Goose was cool and poised, the hints of menace occasionally understated: Petit Poucet, lost in his forest, did not sound as forlorn as he sometimes does, while Laideronnette’s salamander could have been a bit more sinister. The incipient violence lurking behind the opening of Shéhérazade, on the other hand, was superbly captured, while the later songs were an object lesson in sensual restraint. Rattle’s judgment of the wit, enchantment and sadness of L’Enfant proved similarly immaculate.
Whether or not you agree with Kožená’s opinion of Shéhérazade, there is no doubt that she sings it wonderfully well, projecting the ambivalences of the text with suggestive refinement. After the interval, she returned as the Child in L’Enfant, responding with melancholy bewilderment as the world the boy has unthinkingly damaged slowly turns on him. The cast was strong. Patricia Bardon played the boy’s stern if affectionate Mother. Jane Archibald sang the Fire’s aria with ravishing tone and tremendous virtuosity. Anna Stéphany, cast as both the White Cat and the Chinese Cup, duetted deliciously with Gavan Ring’s Black Cat and Sunnyboy Dladla’s Teapot respectively.
A deeply touching performance, impeccably done.
• On BBC4 on 26 August.
• The Proms continue until 8 September.
